Thunderbolt

Thunderbolt is a neighbourhood cocktail bar at 1263 West Temple Street, sitting at the meeting point of Historic Filipinotown, Echo Park and downtown Los Angeles, and pairing Southern-inspired food with a technically ambitious drinks programme that leans on clarification and other equipment-led techniques to make cocktails more sustainable, more efficient and more consistent. Its record at the World's 50 Best Bars is unusually sustained for a room this casual: ninth in North America and Best in the West in 2022, the Campari One To Watch award and number 66 globally the same year, number 10 and Best in the West in 2023, and number 8 and best bar in the western United States in 2024, alongside a StarChefs Los Angeles Rising Star bartender award in 2021. The bar states plainly that it is ADA accessible and a welcome space for all people, and the kitchen's best-known plate is a pimiento cheese burger with pickled green tomato.

General manager Camron Robertson thinks people misread the place as somewhere that would not suit a non-drinker. We have some fun NA cocktails, he told Resy in January 2026, but our bar staff is also really creative and can create something for you on the fly — which, at a bar with this much technique behind it, is a more valuable offer than a long printed list. The four named zero-proof drinks show the same methods as the full menu. The Pride of Oxnard is a sparkling drink built on whole strawberries, juiced and then clarified, combined with juniper and jasmine teas. School Night is a milk punch using Wilderton citrus and a measure of Wilderton bitter with passionfruit, orange and guava juices, chai and coconut. The Lychee Daiquiri uses rum extract with lychee, lime and salt in a frosted glass. Thumper is a savoury swizzle drawn from Thai red curry, made with fresh carrot and green apple juices, coconut, red curry and a non-alcoholic hemp amaro. Athletic's Upside Dawn lager covers non-alcoholic beer. Robertson's stated ambition for the list is texture — to scratch that itch that makes an NA cocktail taste like much more than just a juice drink. The bar opens at 5pm daily except Tuesday, from 2pm on Sundays.